Technical Field
The present invention relates to a data management device for managing data of an electronic apparatus, a contactless storage medium, an electronic apparatus equipped with the data management device and the contactless storage medium, an apparatus user support system, a data management method, a control program, and a recording medium.
Related Art
A near-field radio communication technology which enables contactless data communication between a contactless IC tag (or card or the like) and an RF reader/writer via an antenna, a so-called RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology has been widely used.
As IC tags (cards) have been made more compact and thinner, they have been used for various portable small objects (such as a credit card, a cash card, an Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) card, a commuter pass, an electronic money card, an identification card). Data is read from the IC tags by fixed RF reader/writer devices such as automatic ticket gates at railway stations.
Other than those examples, technologies improving user convenience by applying the RFID technology have been disclosed in Patent Documents 1 to 4, for example. Patent Documents 1 to 4 disclose installing technologies for IC tags or RF readers/writers in target apparatuses to be used by users (for example, commodities or household electrical appliances) to enable the target apparatuses to communicate with communication terminals (cellular phones or the like). The communication terminals communicate with the target apparatuses to acquire and use data held in the target apparatuses. For example, the communication terminals display and present the acquired data to the users, and also supply the acquired data to external apparatuses or acquire another data from external apparatuses based on the acquired data. The communication terminals function as user support devices, so to speak, which help and support users in using the target apparatuses, and improve convenience for the users in using the target apparatuses.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses an information providing system. In the information providing system, a terminal device (user support device) reads an ID identifying a commodity (target apparatus) from an information providing medium (IC tag) mounted to the commodity, acquires commodity information from a database in a server (external apparatus) based on the read ID, and displays the acquired commodity information.
For example, Patent Document 2 discloses a household electrical appliance. An rice cooker (target apparatus) as the household electrical appliance is configured to access the Internet via an information terminal (user support device) and download rice information from a corresponding website to update a control program and data when no rice information is read from a non-contact information storage medium (IC tag) attached to a rice packing bag.
For example, Patent Document 3 discloses a method of having an IC tag that stores instruction manual data (image, sound, text, etc.) attached to a household electrical appliance or the like (target apparatus), allowing a cellular phone or the like (user support device) to read the instruction manual data from the IC tag and display the data.
For example, Patent Document 4 discloses a product information management system. The system responds to an occurrence of a trouble in an air conditioner (target apparatus) and causes a controller to write trouble information in a tag section (IC tag) attached to the air conditioner, allow a portable terminal (user support device) to read information from the tag section and transmit the read information including trouble information and product information to a management server (external apparatus) of a manufacturer or a dealer.
Patent Document 1 Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2004-310755 (published on Nov. 4, 2004)
Patent Document 2 Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-242628 (published on Sep. 8, 2005)
Patent Document 3 Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-052750 (published on Mar. 1, 2007)
Patent Document 4 Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-015838 (published on Jan. 24, 2008)